Motorola are said to announce an Android 2.4 running tablet at the upcoming CES show and Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft is adapting Windows for the ARM processor to run on battery powered devices, thought to be tablets and other handhelds.
With the success of the iPad, the Galaxy tablet and indeed demand for the Toshiba Folio not going unnoticed, it is hardly surprising that such moves are being made by various manufacturers.
Microsoft in particular had come under pressure to allow its Windows Phone 7 (WP7) operating system (OS) to be used on tablet devices, but steadfastly refused saying that Windows 7 was designed to handle such things. However, various quarters voiced concerns over this saying that Windows 7 was never designed with a primarily touch interface in mind and were unsure how developers could adapt it for such. Given that the OS has been on the market for over a year now, one would have thought that if there was a slick touch based interface lurking in there, someone would have found it by now.
So, with Android stealing a march on Microsoft in the tablet world and presenting itself as the only real rival to Apple in both the smart phone and tablet market, at least by activation volumes anyway, what was Microsoft to do?
Well, one is reminded of local issues to a certain extent and there appear to be analogies with our beleaguered banking system. When Anglo Irish Bank went off the deep end and began to loan ridiculous sums for development land, its balance sheet appeared to be Herculean in its strength. Shareholders at Bank of Ireland and AIB were suddenly asking how this upstart was upstaging the old venerables. The boards of management of the venerables, not immune to a greed, short sightedness and rampant profiteering, decided to emulate this upstart and each began to abandon its principles in the pursuit of profits and we were left with the worst financial crisis not only in the history of our young state, but of almost any small state.
Microsoft in its current position has hauled itself back from having a very poor offering in the desktop and mobile device arena, in the forms of Windows Vista and Windows Mobile, to having very compelling offerings in both in the forms of Windows 7 and WP7. Now, to try to get into a market where it has already spectacularly failed (anyone remember those awful tablet laptops running Windows XP?) where there are two extremely strong players with extensive experience of the market, not to mention greater affinity for the consumer end, seems ambitious to say the least. But one must ask why? Why is Microsoft interested in a market niche that it has previously abandoned? The Anglo effect I would argue. Redmond sees the demand for Galaxy tablets, Folios and the soon to be Motorola tablets, and wants some of the action. Another major effect in this segment though is consumerisation. Tablets are being driven into enterprise through consumer usage first and as a recent comment by a Dell exec supports, it is bringing them increasingly into mainstream enterprise usage because IT professionals want them. But the critical thing here is that it is only on the groundswell of consumer usage first that the effect tends to take place.
By adapting a version of Windows to run on the ARM processor family to get into this market, Microsoft will likely go with its old allies of HP and Dell, possibly Lenovo too, and create a Windows tablet. But without the consumer appeal of the other devices, it is hard to see how it will succeed. A case in point is the fact the WP7 devices are a very slow burn indeed. Despite a superb hardware set behind it, the mobile OS is not setting the consumer world afire, despite it being aimed squarely in that direction.
It is a quandary then. It seems that market acceptance of Windows on the desktop does not equate to consumer desirability elsewhere for Microsoft products, as evidenced by the lack of demand for the Zune media players and services, at least this side of the world, and the failure of WP7 to take off in the same way that the Xbox did. So does this indication of Microsoft aiming for the tablet market with an ARM friendly Windows sound like a shrewd move or desperation? One would have to say given past performances in this highly fickle arena, the latter.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers